* Philip Hands: " Re: Extended Long Term Support for Wheezy" (Thu, 22 Feb 2018
08:46:16 +0100):
> On Wed, 21 Feb 2018, m...@linux.it (Marco d'Itri) wrote:
> > On Feb 21, Antonio Terceiro <terce...@debian.org> wrote:
> >
> [...]
> > Indeed. If the scope of the project is reasonable and clearly defined
> > then I would definitely be in favour of distributing the results in the
> > Debian archive.
>
> I'm in favour of making it possible for our users to build structures
> that enable longer support periods if that's what they require. There
> would seem to be a need for an OS that would have support measured in
> decades rather than years, and we should not get in the way of Debian
> being that OS.
>
> If doing this stepping-stone to longer support allows sponsors to get
> used to funding such very-long-term support, then I think we should give
> it a chance to develop as part of Debian.
>
> Once the funding dries up for Wheezy, we can always decide it didn't
> really work out and not do it for future releases.
>
> I would however suggest that it should not be part of the normal mirror
> area, since:
>
> There is going to be a step-change in the level of support, with many
> more packages dropping out of support. Users should have to notice
> this and update their sources.lists as they see fit.
While I agree completely with your mail, Phil, I would add even more concerns
about the general usability of a distribution tailored for just a few target
users in terms of security support. I think other users (than the sponsors) of
this distribution should be warned very clearly about the specific and
restricted security support.
Since we (most probably) don't know at this stage which subset of all packages
will be supported it is really difficult to assess the benefit of this
distribution and if it can be recommended for general usage. Therefore I
would consider it finally better to not use the Debian infrastructure at least
for the distribution of these packages.
> We don't want to inflict ever increasing demands for space on the
> mirror network by keeping ever older, mostly obsolete, distros around.
> Especially since it might be that very few people end up using them.
>
> I'd have thought that the sponsors should be willing to set up mirrors
> for these repos. if there is a need for mirrors (since they're quite
> likely to do that anyway for internal use, and so just need to provide
> public access to those).
+1
> Cheers, Phil.
Cheers,
Mathias
--
Mathias Behrle
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